Lower Black Creek Primitive Baptist Church, founded in 1783, was the second church organized in what is now Wilson County. (It closed its doors in 2010.) The church’s nineteenth and early twentieth-century records includes names of enslaved and freed African-American members, who worshipped with the congregation as second-class Christians even after Emancipation.

This page is entitled “A list of Names & members belonging to the church at Black Creek Meeting House Wayne County.” It is not dated, but the left margin contains baptism dates (and suggests the page was compile from earlier data.) Additional info appears for a few members in the right-hand column. Four “servants,” i.e., enslaved people, appear in the list.

• Choe, a servant of John Barnes, baptized in 1827
• Joe, a [servant of] of William Horne, baptized in 1828, “dead”
• Jim, a servant of John Hooks, baptized in 1828
• Mary, a [servant] belonging [to] T. Wasson, baptized in August 1852